Its been stated by others above…worms in many fish species is common. Cod and Swordfish chief among them of non sushi grade fish served in restaurants or available in grocery stores. Which is why those are fish types that are always recommended to cook thoroughly and completely to be safe.
Sushi and Sashimi fish is either flash frozen before use to kill any parasites, or selected from species and sources that are usually very safe. Various tuna, mackeral, and halibut for example. You won’t find cod or swordfish at a proper Japanese restaurant on the sushi menu.
One of the issues here is that someone at the restaurant is under-cooking the fish. Either due to willful ignorance or concern about drying out the fish itself. This is both stupid and dangerous for obvious reasons. They have most likely gotten people sick before who didn’t realize this was the reason. There are sure fire prep and cooking methods to ensure these proteins are not dried out when prepared and are safe for consumption. They should do some homework and fix their issues.
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That didn’t stop this journalist from eating there. https://www.nj.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2018/08/cod_worm_stella_marina_asbury_park_nj_new_jersey.html
Not overcooking the fish can leave the worm just warmed up a little.
Like a nice sauna.
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There’s a good reason I’m so damn picky about my preferred seafood; cod has never made the cut.
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When making proper fish n chips…cod is the best IMO for it (haddock comes second). But in that you are definitely cooking the fish to proper temps. Nothing grosser than underdone fried food.
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I don’t like most fish in general due to texture issues; salmon tuna and halibut are rare exceptions.
ITA.
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There’s never been a better time to go Vegetarian. That said, my old roommate used to be a waiter in a fancy restaurant and these worms were so common that they would stand around and watch the worms pop as they cooked the fish on the grill. The worms would wriggle out as teh heat intensified and that’s just normal. And gross.
Fancy restaurants remove the worms, even if they’re dead, or buy fish without worms. As even when the worms aren’t wriggly they’re unpleasant. It’s considered pretty low rent and unprofessional not to remove them live or dead.
Cod always has worms of this sort. Excepting a pretty limited season in the deep winter, And deep water. Can’t remember if it’s that the worms haven’t hatched yet or if they spend that part of the season in a different host. That’s still the recreational fishing season. But we tend to catch them commecially year round.
How do they find and remove them without impacting the filet?
How difficult or easy are they to spot? I don’t cook fish at home except for salmon, so I’ve never seen these before.
Yeah, that rings true. I think that’s why they say they and watched them pop. They must have been removing them.
The standard technique is referred to a ‘candling’. You apply a strong backlight to fillet and apparently the worms are optically distinctive enough to be picked out.
More sensitive assays suggest that(thanks to some combination of rushed inattention and camo worms) efficacy is limited; but I imagine that the worms the customer is most likely to notice are the most optically distinctive ones; so your selection bias and their selection bias line up in convenient harmony…
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As you break down the fish the worms tend to. Well come out to play. You can shine a strong light on or through the fillet to make them more visible. The fish is translucent and the worms aren’t. Once you’re working on portioned or filleted fish all the worms tend to be accessible.
You then use either a pair of tweezers or a papertowel/cloth to pull them out one by one. It’s incredibly gross and time consuming. A good fish monger will do this before you buy it. A good wholesaler will do this before they ship to a restaurant. So most places are cleaning up stragglers. If you’re working from whole fish though you’ve got to get all of them yourself.
Tweezers tend to be preferred. With a thin pair you can get inbetween the flakes/grain of the fish to get deeper worms without fucking the fillet up. Sort of the same way pin bones are removed.
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Cod is pretty good for fried and whole steamed fish (Chinese), which is pretty damn good. But also fully cooked.
Ling cod is not a bad choice in fin-fish, kinda’ middle of the road.
It takes other flavors well, as do snails.
I would (potentially) make the same mistake that these people made.
And make a good item.
I would not retaliate though, I would apologize.
Doesn’t matter; the texture of the meat after being cooked is the main problem as far as I’m concerned… let alone the potential for parasites.
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Is also apparently cleaner than real cod. My brother is the sort of avid fisherman who goes out daily year round. He won’t go fishing for regular cod. Only lingcod. Because “it’s less gross”.
That’s definitely a roundworm, not anything you’d find on a vegetable.
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You are my favorite type of person! …pedantic.
(I say this as a fellow retentive)
